I Was Into Chainsaw Man Before It Was Cool
Promise this piece won’t be nearly as obnoxious as that headline
Recently at a con I was hanging out with a friend in the business, and not to put a feather in my own cap or anything, but he says to us:
“I wish I could do something for you and Patz for cheer-leading Chainsaw Man the way you did when nobody was reading it!”
Because that got him onto Chainsaw Man early, and pretty soon after he did, Chainsaw Man got actually popular. And right now, the masterpiece-treatment anime adaptation by MAPPA is exposing even more new viewers to Tatsuki Fujimoto’s grimy, unpredictable anti-hero story.
We joked, yeah, put the two of us out on stage in front of a bunch of bored, disappointed anime con teens to say “We were into Chainsaw Man before it was cool”, and then tell the thrilling tale of us bravely clicking a button on the Shonen Jump website and repeatedly saying “whoa, this owns!” on Twitter. Two heroes bravely saying to each other every week, “Oh my god, I hope Jump doesn’t cancel Chainsaw Man.” It’ll be hilarious. Fujimoto would be happy if he heard about it.
But seriously, I was into Chainsaw Man pretty early— but not cool enough to have been into Fire Punch— and the reason I bring that up, the message I wish to impart is that the beginning of Chainsaw Man is not actually the part that people are excited about.
Expectations
People coming off reading the Chainsaw Man manga are going to have the back half fresh on their minds: this is totally reasonable, because the climax of the story is sure to stay in your head for the rest of your life. When manga fans think about the anime, they’re probably thinking about the really big scenes getting animated. The ones I can’t talk about. There are so many of them. Halloween.
When did it happen?
When did Chainsaw Man get really popular? Unscientifically, anecdotally, I believe I first started to see buzz about the Chainsaw Man manga around the time Denji fought Riese, the Bomb Devil. That’s not until volume six of the manga! That’s halfway through!
So I think there’s probably a gulf between the expectations that Chainsaw Man fans have for the anime, and the story that new viewers are actually watching right now.
That’s only half the comic
But Chainsaw Man the anime has to start from the beginning, and it’s easy to forget that while Chainsaw Man is wild from chapter one, the scale is much smaller for quite a while. It’s just this grubby little feral dude getting into skirmishes with demons and, in between, being aimlessly horny and getting pushed around by hot babes.
I love this part— I love stupid, flawed, animal Denji, his innocence and selfishness and weakness— but I have to admit, the stakes don’t go up for a bit. I also have to admit that stakes in fiction don’t mean much to me anymore.
As a fan of Chainsaw Man who thinks it’s great all the way through, including the currently running second part of the manga, just keep in mind that things get bigger than what you’re seeing right now. And when they do get bigger, you’re gonna know it.
For right now, enjoy the early Chainsaw Man. The Chainsaw Man that puts people off at the first episode. The Chainsaw Man that you will look back on later, and sigh.
